Patients at hospitals and other care centers regularly require controlled drug intake as a part of the patient's prescribed therapy. One form of controlled drug intake is accomplished by infusing fluidic drugs with a medical infusion pump.
Medical infusion pumps, in general, provide regulated drug delivery to a patient. These pumps are used to deliver a selected drug or other therapeutic agent to a patient at a predetermined rate that is programmed into the pump. Programming and managing medical infusion pumps can be difficult and cumbersome. This can be due to the fact that a single pump can be programmed for delivering different fluids in different therapies and in different locations within a hospital. Programming fluid delivery rates can be difficult because maximum or minimum delivery rates can vary based on the patient, the fluid to be delivered, or certain conditions surrounding the pump.
Medical infusion pumps are often configured to track events occurring within the pumps, and to generate messages related to pump operation, such as describing current status and operational programming. When programmed incorrectly or operating outside of the bounds of current operational programming, the medical infusion pumps may also generate a number of types of alarms of differing severity. Managing these alarms, messages, and other and status indicators can be difficult for a variety of reasons. For example, to ensure that a qualified individual is notified of the existence of an alarm, alarms may be broadcast to a number of redundant individuals, causing a large volume of unnecessary alarm notifications. The generated alarms generally attract the most responsive individuals as opposed to those individuals best qualified to react to the alarms.